Part 25 (1/2)

This last remark was addressed to the motive power of his jaunty red wagon. In obedience the wheels began to revolve faster. But press onward as he would, supper-time found the professor--so strangely shorn--still some distance from the hills.

”That storm's coming right up, too,” he said to himself over his after-supper pipe; ”well, no help for it. I guess we'll have to push on.”

Watering his animals from a bucket previously filled at the spigot of a big water keg built into his wagon the professor hitched up and pressed on to his destination. Darkness came on, but still he drove steadily forward, seeking the shelter he knew he could find in the lee of the barren hills.

”Going to be a hummer and no mistake,” he commented half aloud; ”good thing-it-didn't catch me out in the middle of the alkali or Red Bill and his cronies might have had a new lease of life.”

It was close upon midnight when the professor found a spot to his liking, and by that time the first desultory puffs of the coming storm were sighing in the nooks and crannies of the barren hills.

He tethered his team, gave them their hay in the shelter of the wagon, watered them and then, after a good-night pipe, prepared to turn in. He woke from a troubled doze to find the wind rocking the wagon within which he slept.

”Wonder what kind of weather the ponies are making of it?” he muttered, and rising he opened the canvas flaps at the front of the wagon and peered out.

At that instant he saw, or thought he saw, two dark objects move by in the flying smother of sand. But the next moment he told himself it must have been imagination.

”Guess being alone so much is getting on my nerve,” he commented.

Having seen that his stock were lying down and turning their backs on the flying drift, Wandering William, as he called himself, retired once more. But he couldn't sleep for thinking of the strange illusion he had had.

”No, it wasn't an illusion either,” he said stoutly to himself the next instant. ”I'm prepared to swear that I really did see two figures on horseback, though what, in great ginger cookies, they were doing out in this I don't know. Appears to me though that they must have had to call a halt right around here some place. In that case I'm going to give 'em a hail, an' if they answer it invite 'em into the wagon. This is no weather to be out without an umbrella.”

Chuckling a little at his joke, Wandering William arose and went once more to the front of his wagon.

Placing his hands to his mouth, funnel-wise, he sent a long, shrill cry vibrating out through the storm. Another and another he gave till he was hoa.r.s.e, but there was no reply.

”Guess I was dreaming after all,” remarked Wandering William retiring once more to his blanket.

A sickly yellow light struggling through the sand-laden air heralded the day. But the wind had died down and the particles still held in suspension were rapidly thinning out of the air.

Roy thrust his head from under his saddle like a turtle from its sh.e.l.l.

His lips were dry and cracked, his eyes smarted, his skin was irritated with the sand. The whole world seemed to have turned to sand. It was everywhere.

”Peggy!”

A similar turtle-like head projected from the other saddle. Poor Peggy, she would positively have screamed if she had known the appearance she presented. Her hair was tousled, her eyes red with irritation of the sand, and her lips dry and cracked like Roy's.

”Is--is it all over, Roy?” she asked a bit quaveringly.

”I think so. The wind has died down, and look, the ponies have gotten to their feet. I guess they know.”

”Wasn't it awful. I never thought we should live through it.”

”Nor did I. But there's one good thing, it has obscured our tracks.

If any of Red Bill's gang tried to follow us now they'd have a lot of trouble.”

”That's so,” agreed Peggy, and then went on to tell Roy of the terrifying screeches and yells she had heard in the night.

”Nothing but the wind,” opined Roy, with boy-like superiority. But the next instant it was his turn to start amazedly. Through the fog-like gloom that still overhung the desert a figure was making its way toward them. Roy's hand flew to the revolver with which the thoughtful Ah Sing had provided his saddle holster.